Free Republic

Key Points OpenAI has decided not to release its GPT-6.1 Astra model due to heightened AI safety concerns. Saachi Jain, head of safety systems at OpenAI, said the model “didn’t quite meet the bar in terms of staying within scope and authorization, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it’s done.” The heads of OpenAI and rival Anthropic have both indicated recently that top AI labs should slow the pace of model development. ======================================================================= OpenAI decided not to release an upcoming artificial intelligence model, GPT-6.1 Astra, after determining that it did not adequately meet...

One of President Donald Trump’s major focuses has been rooting out fraud across taxpayer-funded public services. Through their White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, Co-chairs Vice President JD Vance and Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson have touted unprecedented efforts to expose and crack down on massive instances of fraud since February 2026. Yet, despite the national implications and scope of Trump, Vance and Ferguson’s campaign against fraud, Google News implemented a months-long blackout of coverage of their key actions and accomplishments in its morning feed. Put into practice, the blackout means that millions of active Google News users...

Elon Musk is making a sky-high prediction for artificial intelligence. The SpaceX CEO says computing will eventually move almost entirely off Earth. “The amount of compute in space will obviously round up to 100% of all compute,” Musk wrote on X in response to a video about Google’s Project Suncatcher. The project explores whether solar-powered satellites carrying Google’s AI chips could work together as an orbital data center. In the video Musk responded to, researchers describe satellites flying in tight formation and linking their chips to handle larger computing tasks. The idea is still in the testing stage. Google has...

Clash over proposed DHS rule to charge $103,265 fee reignites spat over highly skilled immigration WASHINGTON—An industry group representing the country’s largest tech companies is urging the Trump administration to withdraw its proposal to charge companies $103,265 for most new H-1B visa applications, reigniting a fight between the White House and Silicon Valley over a popular program for highly skilled immigrants. The sector’s opposition, filed Thursday as a public comment on the Department of Homeland Security’s pending H-1B fee rule, is significant because tech companies—which consistently oppose tightening access to immigration paths—have almost uniformly supported President Trump’s policies of minimal...

Google on Friday disclosed the first known instance of its artificial intelligence software, Gemini, carrying out an undirected computer hack, weeks after similar disclosures by AI firms Anthropic and OpenAI raised security alarms about AI models going beyond the instructions of their human creators. Google said in a statement that in May its AI model gained unauthorized access to three outside systems during a test by either guessing login information or using login credentials it found in a public repository. Heather Adkins, a Google vice president for security engineering, said in the statement that the AI model thought that the...

Sherrod Brown slams Ohio data centers in ads but quietly took big money from Google lobbyists tied to the same projects. Google PAC and its lobbyists gave Brown over $30,000 while Brown now pretends the company is hurting working families with higher electric bills. Trump-backed Sen. Husted’s bill to make data centers pay their own power costs passed the House but got blocked by Senate Democrats. Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is running a new attack ad blaming Republican Sen. Jon Husted for bringing data centers to Ohio. The spot claims the facilities drive up electric bills for local families....

Chandler Hall, representing, on Television, the foolish Center for American Lack of Progress, stated that adding the National Guard to Cities, including our now Great Again, Washington, D.C., had “NO impact on Crime.” How crazy is that. Hall was met with furious dissent. The report is just another Radical Left SCAM, as are the people who fund this gaggle of Lunatics, including George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, Google, Apple, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, WellsFargo, Bank of America, Walmart, Toyota, T-Mobile, and NBC Universal. Foreign support includes the Embassy of Japan, the Korea Foundation, Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office...

Jimmy@mahim_aibriefFrance just wiped Google and Microsoft off 2.5 million government computers.Germany moved 30,000 PCs off Windows. Denmark binned Microsoft Office. All of it in the last 18 months.Here's exactly what they replaced it with, and how to do the same tonight:Sep 1, 2026· Jimmy@mahim_aibrief·11h1/ Swap Out GmailGmail's AI reads your emails by default. There's a class action running over precisely that.Swap to: ProtonMail. Free, Swiss, encrypted end to end. No AI reading it, and outside US jurisdiction entirely.Search "Proton Mail" → sign up → start moving anything sensitive over. Jimmy@mahim_aibrief·11h2/ Swap Out Google SearchEvery search builds your ad profile. That...

President Trump's order to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America" is stirring up more controversy, as tech companies decide whether to comply or not. The big picture: Google and other digital map providers — like MapQuest and Apple — have split on whether to accept the name change or keep Lake Ontario on their maps. Driving the news: An Axios review of Google and Apple Maps on Sunday showed Google now says "Lake America" on mobile and desktop, while Apple Maps says Lake Ontario. Google said Saturday that it had changed the maps in accordance with updates from the U.S....

Did you ever fly on Spirit Airlines? Or work there? Or send an email to someone who worked there? Then your information will soon be feeding Google’s artificial intelligence model. The discount airline halted all operations in May, and it’s been selling off its remaining assets through the bankruptcy process ever since. While most of that is planes, equipment, and real estate, there’s other things that are valuable, too. It was disclosed late Monday that the company agreed to sell its data to Google for $10 million. That includes emails and internal communications, spreadsheets, transactions with the public including bookings...

Google on Wednesday revealed an overhaul of its AI leadership, as its chief scientist for nearly three decades exits – the latest in a string of high-profile departures to plague the tech giant in its struggle to pull ahead in the artificial intelligence race. Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind, will become the company’s chairman and chief scientist, while Google DeepMind’s technology chief, Koray Kavukcuoglu, will lead work on Google’s new Gemini 4 model, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced in a post on X. Jeff Dean – Google’s current chief scientist and one of the company’s first employees, working...

Google’s parent company Alphabet has reportedly more than quadrupled its office space in Miami this year after co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin bought mansions in the area, fleeing California ahead of a proposed tax on billionaires. This spring, Alphabet signed a lease to expand its Miami space to about 45,000 square feet, adding to its current 10,000 square-foot satellite office in the city’s financial district, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Page and Brin are the second- and third-richest people in the world, with net worths of $257 billion and $237 billion, respectively, according to Forbes. Their...

Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell explains local opposition to data centres is rooted in public backlash against Google and Amazon, which profit off user data, which causes the frustration. McDowell points out the significant increase in data centre restrictions across the U.S., including New York's moratorium, reflecting concerns over energy, water, and job displacement.

You may be hearing that Samsung Messages is going away, and for many Android users, that's true. Samsung is quietly phasing out its Samsung Messages app and moving people to Google Messages as the default texting platform with a planned cutoff around July 2026 in the U.S. Newer Galaxy phones already come with Google Messages preinstalled, and Samsung Messages is no longer available to download on many newer devices. That shift is real. But the way people are finding out about it is causing confusion. For many people, it starts with a text that doesn't feel quite right. They're checking...

A new Google Search setting can save Lens images, voice searches and uploaded files. Here’s how to turn it off ... There are few emails that make your stomach drop faster than one about "new privacy settings." That usually means a company has moved another data switch, renamed a control or tucked a new choice inside an account menu you rarely visit. Google is now rolling out one of those changes for Search services. The setting is called Search Services History. It controls whether Google saves your activity from Search services when you are signed into your Google Account. That...

Apple and Google spent months suppressing negative news stories about the scandal-plagued Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner prior to his recent downfall, according to a new study obtained by Fox News Digital. The Media Research Center (MRC), a conservative watchdog group, found that Apple News and Google News published zero stories between November of last year and May of this year about the various controversies that muddied Platner's Senate bid, including headlines about his Nazi tattoo and his offensive Reddit posts. The MRC study said the blackout in coverage began after a poll released in late October suggested Platner...

Project Jade, Wyoming’s largest data center, is now Project Tembo, and the company behind the 2.7-gigawatt facility is a mystery no longer. The data center will be owned and operated by none other than Google, giving Cheyenne yet another of the world’s largest tech companies in what is fast becoming an emerging tech frontier. Cheyenne has hosted Microsoft data centers for the past decade or so and that company has announced plans for a major expansion on a 3,500-acre tract of land whose annexation is pending before the Cheyenne City Council. Meta announced last year it was joining the Wyoming...

I thought I had missed something major in my reporting. Turns out I had stumbled into an AI-fueled feedback loop that involved a real LLC’s fictional website and a search engine that’s thrusting unreliable answers on users. Last month, my colleagues and I published an investigation into a Texas oil refinery startup, America First Refining, that had secretly gotten investment from Donald Trump Jr. We discovered a saga involving the Trump administration’s tariff policy, sanctioned Russian oil and an Indian billionaire family’s private zoo. At the center of the story was the CEO of the refinery company, Texas businessman John...

Google billionaire Sergey Brin is reportedly among the many New York City landlords fearing more hurt from capitalism-hating Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze — seemingly dumping his stake in a real-estate fund for pennies on the dollar. Amphitheatre LLC, an investment firm affiliated with Brin, last year sold shares in a New York real estate fund that holds nearly 5,900 units back to its manager, A&E Real Estate, according to documents filed in December and earlier reported by Bloomberg. It is unclear how much Brin invested with A&E — which Mamdani called out earlier this year — or how much...

Numerous European Countries have been discussing the imminent implementation of a Digital Services Tax on American Companies. Some of these Countries are close to actually doing this. Please let this statement serve to represent that any Country that imposes such a Tax will immediately be met with a 100% TARIFF on any and all Goods sent to the United States of America. This TARIFF will supersede Trade Deals made with the Country, whether implemented, signed, or not. Additionally, the 100% TARIFF will be immediately imposed, if they proceed. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP